I have a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 SP2 print server. This is serving about 15 print queues the problem is just one of these queues is randomly losing its printer ports.
What do i mean by losing the ports?
A printer is setup with custom ports, printing works perfect until randomly printing stops and errors. Then under the printer properties on the ports tab, the custom created ports are no longer showing. If i jump into the registry and look under the key:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Monitors\SafeCom Pull Port\Ports
all of the ports are visible even the ones which no longer show! – a little more information would be all other queues are setup with HP Drivers, but this one is a Xerox 7755 using the correct driver. If I create new ports printing resumes as normal.
Has anyone else come across behaviour like this?
Why are you using custom ports?
This is because printing is being monitored by a print auditing software package which has its own ports.
Only this one print queue has this issue, all others work as they should do.
Many thanks for looking at this question.
Cheers
Update
Event logs show nothing related or worth while mentioning. The server has been powered off and then backup. The time between the last occurance of the ports disapearing has been about 2 months.
All ideas are welcomed!
Best Answer
Specially if you don't see any meaningful OS logs, you might be looking at a particular issue with your print auditing software (version) and the xerox print driver (since others aren't showing this behavior). See if there is a way to get application-specific logs for this software, instead of looking at windows logs for anomalies. If all fails, check the support website for the vendor, or call for support... this could be a known bug where they can provide a quick hot-fix/update (I did a quick check for this type of issue on a print auditing software we used to use [PCounter], and found this being a bug in one of their versions--maybe not what you're using, but it might support the claim of it being a software bug).
...at least it's only affecting one printer and not all :)